Palakkad: Palakkad Tuesday became the first fully electrified district of the country. Announcing this, Union Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said, the government was working on a target of bringing electricity to all villages in the next two years. He recalled that when UPA Government came to power in 2004, 1.17 lakh villages in India did not have power and since then, around 68,000 villages have been electrified and others would be covered in the next two years.

“India would achieve self-reliance in producing power generation equipment in one-and-a-half years. The equipment and ancillaries like turbines were now mostly being produced by public sector Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. More companies had entered the sector in recent times,” he said.The minister noted that the government was taking effective measures to bring down transmission losses. “The achievement of Kerala in this regard has been commendable as transmission loss of the state grid stands at 18.7 per cent, against the national average of 37 per cent,” he said.